The Buzz: Lots of Comic Book News, Alice in Wonderland Makes $1 Billion, Hollywood Deaths, and More

The Buzz is a feature in which we round up the biggest and most popular film and television stories of the week. Why go through pages of blogs just to find out what everyone is talking about? We’ve got it all right here. Check out all the stories after the break.

Comic Book Movie News

Lots of updates on the superhero front. First, we have a bunch of casting updates on upcoming films. James McAvoy is set to play a young Charles Xavier (older version previously played by Patrick Stewart) in X-Men:First Class. Tommy Lee Jones is confirmed to play an unknown part in Captain America, and he’ll be joined by Dominic Cooper, who will play a young Howard Stark in the WWII set film. Also, those Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye rumor won’t go away. In non-casting news, DC Entertainment is gearing up for a slew of comic book movies including Flash, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman.

Hollywood Deaths

Gary Coleman passed away on Friday at the age of 42 from a brain hemorrhage. He was the star of the 70s and 80s hit TV show Diff’rent Strokes, playing Arnold Jackson and making the phrase “What you talkin’ about, Willis?” famous. Also, Dennis Hopper, 74, died this morning after a long struggle with prostate cancer. The actor has a long and accomplished resume, and has received two Academy Award nominations, one for Easy Rider in 1970 another for Hoosiers in 1987.

In Other News

On Thursday, Alice in Wonderland became only the sixth movie to ever make $1 Billion at the box office. The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is being made by Platinum Dunes, which might be a bad thing given their track record. It looks like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley will be replacing Megan Fox in Transformers 3. Also, Legendary Pictures (think almost every Warner Bros comic book movie) got the movie rights to the video game Mass Effect, as well a sci-fi pitch called Pacific Rim.




That’s it for this week’s The Buzz. There is a lot of film and television news every week, so if you think something was big enough for us to include above, let us know in the comments below.